The Problem with Pranks
by LaylaBinx
Summary: Cassandra still thinks pranks are harmless fun. Ezekiel begs to differ. Mentions of past bullying and abuse.


**Hello everyone! Hope you're doing well! This story came from a prompt a friend of mine gave me following _The Disenchanted Forest._ She wanted to see something with Ezekiel having a bad experience with pranks and I'm a sadist so this happened. Anyway, hope you all enjoy! :D**

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It's somewhere between the startled yelp and the look of betrayal in Ezekiel's eyes that Cassandra realizes she's messed up. It was just supposed to be another prank, a silly little joke between the two of them. It was supposed to be harmless but somehow it wasn't.

She wasn't expecting Ezekiel to look so angry when she opened the door, his expression a harsh mixture of disbelief and indignation. She wasn't expecting him to look so hurt, stricken like she had just unwittingly committed some unforgivable offense. Worst of all, she wasn't expecting the look of fear in his dark eyes, the hint of borderline panic that was painted across his expression like a mural, disappearing almost as quickly as it appeared. Ezekiel was angry and hurt and scared and Cassandra realizes she's made a terrible mistake.

To be honest, she probably should have stopped after the whole inflatable-mattress-in-the-lake thing. Ezekiel had been noticeably upset about that, ranting about her pranks and her silly emulation of camp movies. However, his irritation had dissipated almost immediately after he found the briefcase submerged in the shallows and it became clear there really was something going on in the camp.

After that it had been nothing but a downhill spiral: Jake got kidnapped by the forest, Jake got turned into a tree, there was a literally a battle between man and nature, and honestly being a Librarian is just a _very_ strange job, sometimes. But they were triumphant in the end; they saved Jake and the forest and everything in between and it felt like a victory. Until now.

It had been Eve's idea to stay one final night at the campground. Maybe she felt they needed the break, maybe she just didn't want to go back to the Library yet since Flynn had bugged out again. Whatever the reason (and none of them were comfortable enough to ask), they ended up staying in their cabin one more night with the plan to head back the next morning.

Jake was off somewhere with Serena and Eve had disappeared as well (likely to have a very tense, secretive conversation with the DOSA team) and that left Cassandra and Ezekiel to their own devices. And yeah, Cassandra really should have known better but she couldn't help herself from pulling one last prank on her fellow Librarian.

She waited until Ezekiel came back to the cabin and gave him a big grin and bright eyes and asked if he can grab something off the top shelf of the closet for her. The thief regarded her dubiously, one eyebrow quirked in suspicion, before relenting and walking over to the aforementioned closet and stepping inside. The second he cleared the threshold, Cassandra rushed up behind him and closed the door with a quick slam, flipping the lights off and pressing her back against the wood panel.

There was a quick, short yelp from inside the closet and Ezekiel slammed his hand (or maybe his fist?) against the door behind Cassandra's back. The impact was hard and jarring enough to cause her shoulders to bounce against the wood and the feeling of desperation behind it causes her to frown. She pulled away, realizing something was wrong, and turned to open the door.

Ezekiel is standing there in the darkness of the closet, angry and just a little panicky. He stares at her, dark eyes turbulent with a number of emotions she can't identify, and shakes his head.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" he snaps, the words coming out short and sharp like a slap.

Cassandra flinches involuntarily; she's never seen Ezekiel this angry before. "I was just-"

"You were just what, Cassandra?" Ezekiel demands, shoulders tense with anger. "Playing another prank?"

She shakes her head once quickly. "I'm sorry," she stutters, alarmed by the hurt, broken quality of Ezekiel's voice. "I didn't mean to...I mean, I didn't know-"

"No, you _don't,_ " Ezekiel cuts her off, left hand trembling just the slightest bit at his side. "You think these pranks are fun and harmless but they're not. They're mean and cruel and they're not funny. You wanna mess with people? Go pick on Eve or Stone but leave me out of it!"

For a moment Cassandra is speechless. She's never seen Ezekiel like this, raw and angry and vulnerable. He's usually so aloof and unaffected, one step away from apathetic on most days. But right now, trembling in the darkness of the closet, she realizes how wrong she was.

"Ezekiel," she starts, her voice faltering a little as she speaks. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean-"

The thief just shakes his head and rakes his shaking hand through his hair. "Just…" he starts and heaves out a heavy sigh. "Just leave me alone, alright?" He pushes his way out of the closet and brushes past her, shoulder bumping into hers as he passes none too gently. He's angry and nothing she says or does right now will help matters so she lets him go.

Ezekiel storms to the front of the cabin and wrenches the door open, stalking outside and disappearing into the darkness of the camp. Cassandra watches him go, flinching just a little when the door slams shut following his departure. She sighs quietly and looks at the closet for a moment. She's messed up, she knows she has, and in spite of being a mathematical genius, at the moment she doesn't know how to fix this.

 **OOOOO**

She finds Ezekiel sitting on the dock, a pile of rocks at his side and his feet dangling over the edge. For a moment she hesitates, debating whether she should approach him or not. She doesn't think Ezekiel would just get up and walk away but then again he hadn't been too happy with her earlier either.

There had been a brief moment where she considered trying to find Eve or Jake, to ask them what she should do, but she dismissed it almost as quickly. She got herself into this mess and it was up to her to get herself out. So she takes a deep breath, sets her shoulders, and walks out onto the dock.

Ezekiel doesn't turn as she approaches but there's a very slight shift in his body language that indicates he knows it's her just by the sound of her footsteps. He keeps his back to her, reaching down and plucking a rock from the pile absently before skipping it out over the lake. The rock bounces about six times before sinking beneath the surface with a soft 'sploosh.' Ezekiel picks up another rock and repeats the process as Cassandra comes to a stop beside him.

She watches wordlessly for a few seconds, counting the skips and doing the calculations in her head. "You know," she starts, her voice sounding loud and intrusive in the silence of the night. She clears her throat and tries again. "If you turn your wrist about thirty-seven degrees to the right when you release the rock you'll get between ten and eleven skips before it sinks."

Ezekiel doesn't look at her but he picks up another rock and pulls his hand back to throw it, rotating his wrist roughly thirty-seven degrees before he lets go. Sure enough, the rock bounces ten times across the still surface before sinking into the water. The barest hint of a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth, hardly visible in the dim light.

Cassandra sinks down onto the dock beside him slowly, settling on her knees and letting her hands rest on her legs lightly. She doesn't quite know what to do with her hands so she settles with picking at a piece of fuzz on her tights. She opens her mouth to say something, closes it, opens it again, and slumps in defeat.

"Ezekiel," she starts, voice quiet and low. "I'm really sorry about earlier. I'm sorry about all of the pranks I pulled on you. You're right, I took it too far and didn't think about how it might be hurting my friends. I should have listened to you before. I'm sorry."

The thief shakes his head slowly, the tension draining out of him like a physical weight. "I shouldn't have snapped at you," he says, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. "I was angry and I probably could have handled that better than I did so I owe you an apology as well."

It's Cassandra's turn to shake her head and she settles a little more onto the dock. "No, you were right, I should have stopped with the inflatable mattress." She sighs quietly and lets her own legs dangle off the edge of the dock.

"I guess I just got carried away. I always wanted to go to camp when I was a kid, I thought it would be the greatest thing ever. I watched all the movies and memorized all the plots and I always thought the pranks were the best part." She looks at him with a small, apologetic smile. "I just never realized how mean they can seem to the people on the receiving end of them."

Ezekiel shrugs one shoulder and hands her a few rocks like a peace offering. "It wasn't like you were trying to hurt anyone or anything," he allows, skipping another stone across the lake. "Not like-" the words cut off so quickly it's almost like a record scratch.

Cassandra frowns and looks over at her fellow Librarian. Ezekiel's mouth is pulled in a tight line, the set of his jaw rigid and tense. Whatever he was about to say, whatever he _prevented_ himself from saying, it's clearly something he doesn't like talking about. She frowns again and turns to face him a little more.

"Not like what?" she asks, trying to keep the question as neutral and non-intrusive as possible. Ezekiel is open and blunt about a lot of things except when it comes to his past which makes her think that his reaction earlier and whatever he was about to say are somehow connected.

For a few seconds he's silent, staring intently out across the water like he's trying to figure out a way to jump in without getting his clothes wet again. Finally he sighs, shakes his head, and picks up another rock. "I didn't have a lot of friends growing up," he begins, glancing at her from the corner of his eye as he skips the rock out across the water. "I was a shy kid, not the dashing, awesome super thief you see today."

Cassandra smirks a little as some of Ezekiel's usual humor slides into the conversation. She stays quiet and skips her own rock across the lake's surface, watching as it bounces several times before disappearing beneath the surface.

"Anyway, there was this group of older kids who always hung out at this park up the street from my house. They had a reputation in our neighborhood, a bad one at that, and a lot of people tended to steer clear of them if they could avoid it." A small, humorless little smile crosses Ezekiel's face and he shrugs one shoulder. "Not the best group to hang around with but I was young and stupid so that's exactly what I did."

He picks up another rock but he doesn't throw it this time; instead he bounces it up and down in the palm of his hand for a second before changing his mind and tossing it back and forth from one hand to the other. "I'd help them steal junk food from convenience stores, money from tip jars, little things like that. I was useful to them, I think that's the only reason they kept me around."

He frowns and shakes his head slightly. "They started wanting more, bigger and better things. Jewelry, TVs, things that were worth a lot more money. They kept trying to talk me into stealing stuff like that for them, offering to share the money and everything. They pressed the issue pretty hard for a while but I was like, seven years old and had never stolen anything that big before so I just kept telling them no. Eventually they just stopped asking and I thought it was over."

The rock lands in the palm of one hand and Ezekiel clenches his fingers around it unconsciously. His expression is dark and so are the words that follow. "They met me at the park one day, told me we were going to check out this old house on the other side of town that was supposed to be haunted. I trusted them, like an idiot, and just followed along."

He smiles and it's a dark, bitter expression that has no business on his face. "The house had been abandoned for years and it was in a pretty bad neighborhood so they knew no one would be coming to look for me."

The muscles in his jaw clench just a bit before he speaks again, almost like the words are fighting to stay buried. "When we got there they dragged me down into the basement and handcuffed me to a pipe in the wall."

He throws the rock out into the middle of the lake, letting his hand fall back into his lap heavily. "They told me that a thief who wouldn't steal was about as useful to them as that old house and that I should just stay there where I belonged. Then they took the key, tossed it out somewhere in the front yard, and left me there."

Cassandra stares at him in mute horror, having trouble fully processing what he was saying. "What did you do?" she hears herself ask but the words come tumbling out without her permission, out in the open before she even realizes she's said them.

Ezekiel shrugs one shoulder loosely, helplessly. "I tried to call for help for the first couple of hours but, like I said, it was a pretty bad neighborhood so even if anyone heard me I doubt they would have come to help. Pulling against the handcuffs only broke the skin and it wasn't like the pipe was going anywhere so…"

He fades off, the fingers of his right hand coming up to brush across the inside of his left wrist absently. Cassandra follows the movement, her eyes coming to rest on the hand propped against his leg. There's a band of discoloration that circles his left wrist, the skin just slightly darker compared to the rest of his arm. Cassandra frowns; she wonders why she's never noticed it before, why this is the first time she's become aware of its presence. It's so obvious now that she's seeing it, impossible to miss or ignore.

It's a perfect circle all the way around, like a reverse tan line left by a bracelet. All at once she understands what it is and it hits her like a punch in the stomach. It's a scar; more specifically, it's a scar leftover from handcuffs.

The scar tissue is thicker in some places, particularly toward the middle where the wound was obviously deeper. It stretches across the tendons and ligaments, digging to the bone near the radius. It was a deep, ugly wound at one time, made worse by fear and desperation. Cassandra swallows thickly, her eyes lingering on the scars.

"So…?" she echoes back Ezekiel's last word, encouraging him to continue.

The thief shrugs again, hand dropping away from his wrist like he's trying to physically remove himself from the memory. "So I figured out how to dislocate my thumb," he tells her with a small smirk. "Really handy trick to have in my line of work."

He opens and closes his hand once, fingers curling into a loose fist. "Once I got the joint out of the way, it wasn't that hard to pull my wrist out of the cuff." He smiles grimly and shakes his head. "Funny thing about blood is that it makes a surprisingly good lubricant when you have nothing else on hand and since I'd already shredded the skin trying to pull my way out I had a fair amount to use."

Cassandra just stares at him in shock for a few seconds, a lump settled deep in her throat. For as much as he liked to brag and boast, Ezekiel hardly ever spoke about his life before becoming a Librarian. His past, his family, his childhood, these were all things he kept close and private, only providing personal information when it was absolutely necessary. In many ways Ezekiel was the most frustrating kind of paradox; he was someone who could and would talk about himself for hours without ever revealing anything about himself. So Cassandra hates that she's never heard this story before but she's also not at all surprised by it.

"So what happened after that?" she asks quietly, watching as Ezekiel plucks another rock from the pile and skip it out across the water. They were running low on rocks.

"Well after that I was laid up in bed with pneumonia for a week and half," Ezekiel tells her with all the disinterest of someone discussing credit scores. "Turns out being stuck in the dark, damp basement of an abandoned house for fourteen hours isn't exactly good for your health."

"And what about the other kids? The ones who left you there?"

A muscle in Ezekiel's jaw flexes and he tosses another rock into the lake. "My mom tried to file charges, reckless endangerment, malicious intent, all that. I'm not really sure how much of that was on my behalf and how much of it was her trying to scam the system. Either way, nothing happened."

Cassandra's mouth drops open in shock. "Nothing happened?" she repeats incredulously.

Ezekiel just nods. "There wasn't much the court could do since I went with them willingly. Also, since we were all under the age of eighteen, legal action could only go so far." He sighs and leans back a little. "When the police got involve the other kids said it was just a prank, that they were going to come back for me." He smiles bitterly and shakes his head. "But I knew the minute they left they weren't coming back. Maybe they thought I would just die down there in the basement or maybe they thought I'd eventually be rescued...either way, they weren't coming back."

He picks one of the last rocks and balances it in the palm of his hand. "We moved a few months after that so I never them again." He thinks for a minute and smirks a little. "I should probably thank them now that I think about it."

Cassandra balks. " _Thank_ them? Why on earth would you want to thank them?"

Ezekiel shrugs slightly. "Getting trapped in that basement for fourteen hours taught me everything I needed to know about people. Namely that you can't trust them. After we moved I stopped trying to make friends, stopped trusting people. As I got older, I figured working with other people was a waste of time if the only person I could rely on was myself. No one can let you down if you don't let them. I kept that philosophy up for years until, well…" he fades off and gestures to Cassandra and then around the camp, probably including Eve and Jake in the conversation.

Cassandra just shakes her head slowly. "God, Ezekiel, I'm so sorry. I had no idea."

The thief gives her a small smile and shrugs again. "That's the point. I don't tell that story because I don't _want_ people to know. I hate talking about how scared and helpless I felt down there; kinda destroys the image I've built for myself, you know?"

Another half-hearted smile accompanies his words but it fades just as quickly. "That's why I don't like pranks. Most of the time they're harmless, just silly little jokes at someone else's expense. But that's not always the case." He sighs, shoulders slumping a little with the release of breath. "When I got shut in the closet earlier...I don't know, I just remembered that basement and the handcuffs and everything all at once. It just triggered some bad memories."

"I'm so sorry," Cassandra says again, her voice tight with regret. "I never would have-"

Ezekiel waves one hand loosely. "It's okay. You didn't mean anything by it."

Cassandra frowns, still upset by the revelation, but decides to let it go. "Believe it or not," she begins, drawing her knees up to her chest and resting her forearms on top of them. "I know what it's like to lose trust in people, to feel like you're better off on your own."

Ezekiel glances at her from the corner of his eye. "Yeah?"

The other Librarian nods slowly. "I got bullied a lot in school when I was younger. The other kids used picked on me for everything from my hair to the way I dressed…" the words fade out and she rests her chin on top of her arms. "Some them even made fun of me because of the tumor."

Ezekiel scowls in disgust. "Can we just agree that kids are the worst?"

Cassandra laughs in spite of herself and nods. "Yeah, they definitely can be sometimes." She frowns and shakes her head slowly. "I told my parents about it, I talked to my teachers, I did everything I was supposed to. I was scared and upset and I just wanted someone to listen to me, to help if they could. But no one ever did. They just told me to ignore them, to walk away and stay away from the people who were bullying me. Kinda hard when it's the whole school though…"

"So what did you do?" Ezekiel asks, watching her carefully.

It's Cassandra's turn to shrug and she sighs quietly. "Nothing," she says finally with an air of quiet defeat. "The world had been a cruel, scary place for me before when it was just mean kids I was dealing with but after I found out about the tumor I just stopped trying. It seemed so pointless to try to fight back, to show how much their words hurt, so I stopped giving them the opportunity. I moved schools, I changed classes; I never really faced it head on. I spent a lot of my time running away from people, avoiding anyone and anything that could hurt me."

She smiles a little but it's sad, regretful. "I wanted nothing more than to fit in when I was a kid, to have friends, to have people who cared about me. I never really got that until, well…" She copies Ezekiel's gesture from before, motioning to him and them outward around the camp, including Eve and Jake in spite of their absence.

Ezekiel smirks a little and bumps his shoulder against hers, passing her one of the last two rocks, taking the other one for himself. "Well, here's to being awesome and rising above the bullies," he says, holding the rock up like he's proposing a toast.

Cassandra smiles and holds up her own rock, gently tapping it against Ezekiel's. "To being awesome."

They skip their rocks out over the water at the same time, watching as they bounce across the glassy surface a couples times before finally sinking beneath the surface. A moment of companionable silence passes between them before Ezekiel pushes himself up off the edge of the dock, offering Cassandra his hand. "We should probably head back before Eve and Stone start wondering where we are."

Cassandra accepts his hand and stands carefully, brushing off her skirt with one hand. "Yeah," she says with a smile, turning her back to the lake. "But you should probably change bunks for the night. I may or may not have put glitter in your sheets earlier today."

"Cassandra…" Ezekiel mutters with a groan as the start making their way back to the cabin.

"I know! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" she apologizes with a laugh. "Although to be fair, red glitter would look really good on you."

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 **Thanks so much for reading guys! :D**


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